Alright, folks, answer time. What the hell did I do Friday night? I thought it was really funny that the first guess [I had my hands in a guy’s chest, massaging his heart] was the closest you could possibly get to being right without actually being even remotely close. What do I mean by that? Keep reading…
Before I tell you what I did Friday night that was so interesting that I have to drag this out to such extremes, let me tell you a story! Let me just briefly say that I am finding the Bennington Bypass to be more and more the devil every single day. A history lesson:
-Just before the Bypass opens it claims its first victim. I’m driving home, some dumbass in a construction pickup truck decides to drive in the oncoming lane for a mile, and then some dumbass in my car (uh, that would be me) decides to pass him on the right. He’s, of course, making a right hand turn into what is to become the entrance to the Bypass. He slams into my driver’s side rear door, crunching it in so bad that I can’t open the door and pushes me off the road. My quick reflexes keep me from narrowly killing us all. Construction of the Bypass erases all evidence of the accident. A week later the insurance inspector drives out to take pictures of the scene, but it no longer exists. That dastardly Bypass.
-One slushy pre-spring afternoon I’m driving home on the Bypass and it claims victim #2. The tire treads in the road are dry, but everything around them is covered in a couple inches of slush. I drift into the slush and dovetail for seemingly forever before finally doing a 360 that launches me over an embankment Dukes of Hazzard-style. Brake line busts and the Chevy Lumina never drives the same again. I ditch it in favor of my sexy Mazda 3. Bypass claims its second victim, this time with a fatality.
-I’m driving home on my birthday. Cop pulls me over for speeding. Bypass has me by the balls, as I’d been drinking. Luckily I had outsmarted the Bypass by being responsible and waiting until I was sober to drive. Also, Not-a-Cop played in my favor, dropping me one mile per hour right below that magic speed that really pissed the Po-Po off. Cop lets me off with a warning. Bypass: 2, Me: 1.
-I’m driving home earlier this summer and a dick in a mini-van launches a rock a billion miles per hour at my windshield. The Mazda just can’t take it. I get a giant crack and a new windshield. The Bypass strikes again!
OK, so the history lesson is over. What the fuck, you ask, happen Friday night? I bet you are starting to get some ideas. So let me tell you my story.
I’m driving home from work (why does everything always happen when I’m driving home?). It’s that time a year where it is now finally dark when I drive home, so I’ve got my headlights on. I enter the Bypass (AKA, the Kill Zone) and start driving up the hill. At the top of the hill I notice that a car has pulled over to the side of the road in the opposite lane with his blinker on, indicating that he has indeed pulled over. I don’t think anything of this because it is a fairly common occurrence on the Bypass. Because it is so new people unfamiliar with the road take it and suddenly think they are lost.
Then I notice that another guy is driving by the pulled over car. As that car isn’t pulled over completely onto the shoulder, the car coming towards me starts to drift a little over the centerline. Going up the hill, I’ve got two lanes to choose from, so I naturally start to change lanes, moving right, so that I can make more room for the guy coming towards me. My eyes are focused on the two cars in the other lane. That just happened to be a big mistake.
In the middle of my drift I suddenly notice a dead deer lying in the middle of my two lanes, i.e. right in fucking front of me. I have literally zero time to react. If I were to try any sort of evasive maneuvers at that point I probably would have flipped my car and killed myself. The best (and only) thing I can do is just plow right through it and hope for the best. My driver’s side front tire makes impact and launches the car into the air.
And that’s it. I keep moving forward. Nothing seems immediately wrong.
My first instinct is to, duh, pull over. At that point in the road there isn’t really any shoulder, so I think to myself, instead of making myself a big target I’ll just drive up a little further up and then pull over to check out the damage. I keep driving and everything seems fine with the car, so I just keep on trucking home.
Why didn’t I stop, you ask? Well, there was one big important factor that I haven’t mentioned yet. The SMELL. Instantly, as soon as I hit the deer, the most foul smell I’ve ever had the pleasure to experience invaded my senses. It smelled like some unholy combination of musk, rotting burned flesh, and wet fur. As soon as I knew that the car was fine all I wanted to do was get it home so that I could take the hose to it. Which is exactly what I did.
For a good half-hour I sprayed the bottom of the car. Surprisingly there was not a scratch or drop of blood on the bumper. It completely cleared the deer. The tire was not as fortunate. The wheel well for the front driver’s side tire looked like the victim of a chainsaw attack. Blood and liquefied guts were everywhere. I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed some more. It was only after that half-hour of constant high-pressure water that I finally let the dogs out. Unfortunately, it was when I let the dogs out that I discovered what I crap job I had really done. You could just tell that there were some areas of the car that I didn’t do a very good cleaning, because suddenly the dogs would just go ape-shit at a certain area. I dragged them back into the house and then really went to work.
So, you may be thinking at this point in the story that you now know the answer to the mystery of What did Ben do Friday night? “Hit a deer with my car” is not the correct answer.
After dragging the dogs back into the house I really got to work. I put on some kneepads, busted out the flashlight and got on my hands and knees to be able to tilt my head underneath the car. With very little searching I found plenty more things to spray with my hose. So I sprayed. And I sprayed. And I sprayed. And all of this time the thought I did not want to think kept popping into my head.
“Ben, you’re going to have to pull that chunk of meat out with your hands.”
It was one of those monumental moments of great frustration in life. You keep spraying it and checking, hoping and praying to God that the last spray was enough to knock it loose. Not a chance.
Well, maybe I don’t have to pull it out. Let someone else do it. Yeah, right. There is no one else here to do it. And if you don’t pull that gawddamn chunk of flesh out your car, it is going to stink to all holy heaven come morning.
I wasn’t stupid though. I rummaged around the house for some kind of glove to use. Then I got the idea to put a plastic baggy over my hand. That turned out to be a good idea.
After fortifying myself for the task at hand I got underneath my poor car and reached out to grab the first piece of flesh that I saw. That first piece also happened to be the worst. Why? It looked like meat, but it was really bone. I freaked and dropped it. Oh God, that was so gross. Just that texture…I was not expecting it. Every time I pulled something out I wanted to puke. Did I mention that the smell was horrible? My gag reflex got quite the workout. Pulling those vile guts out from underneath my car, flashlight in tow, was easily the grossest thing that I’ve ever had to do. What was worse was that I usually couldn’t hold the flashlight and reach under at the same time. So I was literally feeling my way through the dark.
All and all I spent over an hour trying to stick my head where I really didn’t want to stick it. I couldn’t get the smell out of my nose. I thought it was everywhere. And worse yet, I hadn’t had dinner yet! Eating was absolutely the last thing on my mind. I am proud to say, though, that after all of that hard work I really do think I did a good job cleaning out the underside of my car. The difference in smell before and after was astronomical. When I noticed that I knew that I did a good job. Still, eww! The damage to my car is seemingly minimal. The mudguard for the engine underneath the bumper was pulled down on the impact side. That’ll have to be fixed. Otherwise, it all looks good. I’m taking it in Tuesday to get checked out, to make sure nothing else more serious is wrong with my baby.
So, in conclusion, What DID Ben do Friday night? He pulled dead deer meat out from underneath his car with his bare hands. Not exactly what everyone wants to be doing on their Friday night. That’s my story. The Bypass strikes again. I’m confident now that that damn Bypass is going to take my life one day. Maybe not soon. Maybe not until I’m 90, even. But believe you/me, that damn road will claim me one day.
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damn Ben! What kind of tires do you have? Ones with teeth??? Sheesh. I have run over lots of things by accident on the road, but never had any stick to me tires…that’s awful.
Well, technically, not much other than a little goop actually stuck to the tires. The tires did do a good job spraying squished deer parts everywhere, though. But the chunks of meat that I had to pull out by hand weren’t in the wheel well. They were in the pointy, sharp edges of the undercarriage where the deer scraped (and was probably dragged a little bit) by my car. My Mazda 3 rides really low to the ground. So low that I couldn’t crawl under it to get at things. You can just imagine what that would do to a full-grown doe.
Aren’t you glad I replied to your comment???